Monday, Oct. 3, 2016 | Indiana Daily Student | idsnews.com
IDS
Adrian Jimenez remembered as charismatic, goofy loved him. Many people have a lot of Facebook friends, but Beck said all of Jimenez’s 2,241 were genuine. Many people are colorful, but Jimenez wore it in the form of his favorite pair of orange corduroy pants, as remembered by his sister Christina Joseph. Many people say they listen to all sorts of music, but Jimenez really did. Joseph said Jimenez actually played every-
By Emily Miles elmiles@iu.edu | @EmilyLenetta
IU sophomore Adrian Jimenez was like a tree, his aunt Suebrina Beck said. His branches stretched through his family, his classmates and his coworkers to form a network of people he loved and who COURTESY PHOTO
Adrian Jimenez, pictured left, died Sept. 23 in Bloomington. He was a sophomore with aspirations to become a film director.
thing on his WIUX show. Jimenez was not like many people. He once stole a baby mannequin hand from Target and surprised his aunt Sarajean Hayes by popping it out of his shirt sleeve when they got back to the car. “He was going to be the crazy cat lady,” said his close friend Marissa Perez, remembering how Jimenez loved his cat, Boots. Jimenez loved IU, the Me-
dia Living Learning Center he participated in last year, and his Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity brothers, his mother Michelle Beck-Jimenez said. Though Jimenez’s cousin Michael Gutierrez was older, he said he looked up to Jimenez for being himself and for working toward his dream to be a film director. “He was going to show us up,” Beck said. “He was going to SEE MEMORIAL, PAGE 6
Walking to remember Students, family gather Sunday for vigil to remember IU sophomore By Christina Winfrey cawinfre@umail.iu.edu | @tinawinfrey33
A line of lanterns led friends and family through Dunn Meadow to a remembrance gathering for sophomore Adrian Jimenez. At the end of the path was a table displaying photos and videos of Jimenez and a poster board on which friends and family could write memories. Friends and family gathered around the table and shared stories about him. Later, they released orange balloons and lanterns in his memory. Sophomore Anna Howell met Jimenez when he lived on her floor last year. They were both members of the Media Living Learning Center. “He was the kind of person that would waste no time knocking on your door, getting to know you and wanting to be your friend,” Howell said. Howell said Jimenez was her first friend at IU. The friendship would last through the summer and into their second year of college. His freshman year resident assistant, Justin Kittell, said he remembers how Jimenez constantly brought the floor together. There were people on the floor who did not talk to anyone but Jimenez, Kittell said. “He reached out to the ones on my floor that were reclusive,” Kittell said. Sophomores Leigh Van Ryn and Keristen Lucero said they remember the little things Jimenez would do for them. Van Ryn said she remembers a day last year when she had been gone all day at class. She went up to her room, unlocked the door and found a note laying on her bed. She walked over and saw it was from Jimenez, saying he loved her and he hoped she had a great day. Van Ryn and Lucero said it was not uncommon for Jimenez to go out of his way to help others or cheer them up. He once left a chocolate pastry on Lucero’s desk for her, and Van Ryn said she remembers the long SEE VIGIL, PAGE 6
EMILY ECKELBARGER | IDS
Alpha Delta Pi sorority members Betsy Adams and Shayna Melemed light a lantern in honor of Adrian Jimenez on Sunday night.
Community walk honors those lost to suicide, raises funds for prevention efforts By Dominick Jean drjean@indiana.edu | @Domino_Jean
At the annual community Out of the Darkness walk, more than 400 people gathered Sunday to remember those lost to suicide. Attendees wore Mardi Gras beads as they walked from Memorial Stadium heading south into IU’s campus The event was a community walk designed to foster suicide awareness and to help fund research into prevention and education, Jim Martinez, a member of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, said. The goal was to raise $20,000, and AFSP raised $26,322 by Sunday afternoon. According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, 40,000 people die each year in the United States from suicide. “The numbers are staggering,” Martinez said. Families from some of those victims were at the community walk, including Regina Burns, a Bloomington native. Burns wore white beads to represent the loss of a child to suicide.
WOMEN’S BASKETBALL
Hoosiers gain 5-star guard, 2017 class now stands at four recruits From IDS reports
IU landed its fourth recruit of the 2017 class Sunday when Jaelynn Penn committed to IU. David Tapley, Penn’s AAU coach for Kentucky Premier, said the five-star wing will make a difference the moment she arrives on campus for IU next season. “She’s complete. She can do it all,” Tapley said. “She’s a great rebounding guard, great passer, really good midrange game. She’s a really long, super athletic kid.” Tapley said it came down to IU Coach Teri Moren’s Hoosiers and South Carolina for Penn after she de-committed from Dayton in September. “She had her pick, but they really like Coach
Men’s basketball, page 8 IU men’s basketball added its third commit in the 2017 recruiting class Sunday. Moren, they like her staff and they like the academics,” Tapley said. “She’s a really smart kid.” Penn visited IU this weekend, and Tapley said she was still scheduled to visit South Carolina, but IU impressed her enough to commit now. The 5-foot-10 guard attends Butler High School in Louisville, Kentucky, and led her team to a 31-5 record and a state title last season. Penn averaged 14.2 points and 5.9 rebounds per game durSEE BASKETBALL, PAGE 6
Burns told the story of her 19-year-old son who died Dec. 9, 2011. Her son, Andi Burns, tested as a genius based on IQ testing when he was a child, Burns said. Burns said her son wrote poetry and played instruments, and people loved being around him. “He brought a smile to everyone’s face,” Burns said. Burns’ mother, Andi’s grandmother, had a stroke only a day before Andi committed suicide. Burns said she remembered coming home from the hospital to check on things when she found him. He had shot himself. Burns said even after five years, she still feels a void in her life every day. “As a mother, there is nothing worse,” Burns said. “It never gets better.” Burns, a second grade teacher, said she used to think saying hello in the hallway was enough for young people. Now after the loss of her son, she makes sure to talk in depth with them. David Ambrose, a junior at IU, said he lost a close friend last month to suicide. Ambrose was wearing blue and purple beads representing
REBECCA MEHLING | IDS
Ben Boyd sits beside Kazlin Wrenz, 5, as she relases her balloon with names of people she knows that have been affected by suicide Sunday afternoon at Memorial Stadium.
suicide awareness and the loss of a relative or friend. He said he lost his friend Austin Weirich last month. Weirich was a student and football player at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana. Ambrose said Weirich had always been involved and a leader in different groups and that he was shocked when he learned that Weirich shot himself. “You don’t think that can hap-
pen to someone so young,” Ambrose said. The hardest part of getting past Weirich’s death was the fact that he would never get to say hello to him again, Ambrose said. “You get to the day when it’s time to go home and just say goodbye for the last time,” he said. Ambrose said people SEE WALK, PAGE 6
First Latino U.S. Poet Laureate visits Bloomington, talks about inspiration By Brooke McAfee bemcafee@indiana.edu | @bemcafee24601
United States Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera discussed the experience of being a Latino in America at ¡Poesía Now!: The Power of Poetry in Our Lives at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater. He said there is too much misinformation and not enough compassion on the topic of immigration. “To say Mexican is to say America,” he said. “It is a difficult experience to hear this rhetoric, and that is why I write and why I speak.” The event included a poetry reading and discussion with Herrera, who is the first Latino to be named U.S. Poet Laureate. During his visit to Bloomington, he spoke to both high school and IU students in writing workshops. College of Arts & Humanities Director Jonathan Elmer, Provost Lauren Robel and IU assistant professor Alberto Varon gave intro-
ductions at the poetry reading. Throughout his career, Herrera has advocated for “poetry as an instrument for political and social change through empathy, understanding and unity,” Robel said. Varon said Herrera’s poetry is a combination of action and aesthetic. “Taking a musical approach to the use of language, his bilingual poetry plays with the rhythms and pulses of English, Spanish and something in between them,” he said. “He dances between the material and the realm of ideas.” Herrera’s work both represents and reanimates beliefs in the American dream, Varon said. Varon also talked about Herrara’s work as an activist. During his career as a poet, he has addressed topics like immigration and empowering Latino and minority communities. “Building on his poetry, Mr. Hererra has for decades used his professional life to cham-
pion causes that seek to improve people’s lives,” he said. “His own history as a poet and activist adamantly insist on the beauty of the everyday of humanity, even as the connections between us are tested and reaffirmed.” Herrera said the students he met at the workshops were full of stories and questions. They went through a whole rainbow of experiences, Herrera said, and they spoke of topics like rape culture, the election, police violence and race. His conversations with the students inspired him, he said. During the reading, he read a short poem from his poetry notebook that was based on a conversation he had with an IU student at one of the workshops. “When I get back to the good old Library of Congress, I want to let them know that things are happening here,” he said. SEE POET, PAGE 6